Taunton police report two more heroin overdoses

TAUNTON — Police have reported two more heroin-related overdoses in the Silver City, neither of which resulted in fatalities.

One of the overdoses was called in at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday for a person who had overdosed inside a multi-family house at 27 Sherwood Drive.

The second was at 9:45 p.m., when cops responded to the rear apartment of 36 Warren St.

Police said when they arrived, a 30-year-old man sitting unconscious in a chair was being attended to by ambulance medics, who managed to revive him by means of the antidote Narcan.

Police also said they confiscated pills, which turned out to be methadone, for which the victim lacked a prescription. The pills were left with emergency room personnel at Morton Hospital, who police said indicated they would not be returned until the man proved he had a legitimate prescription.

There have been seven deaths and 74 reports of heroin-related overdoses in Taunton since the beginning of 2014, according to police.

The most recent death attributed to injecting heroin was the 46-year-old son of a retired Taunton police captain. He was reported dead last Friday when police arrived at his family’s Kilmer Avenue residence.

Police blame cheap heroin, made stronger and more dangerous by being cut with the painkiller fentanyl, for the abundance of overdoses so far this year.